


Sunrise

by blackkat



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [43]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dimension Travel, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Maes wakes up in the Elemental Countries after his death, and promptly gets into trouble. Genma gets him out of it.





	Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on my Tumblr that went sideways, because I'm me: Gai and Armstrong meeting sounds epic, but mother-hens Gemma and Maes would be spectacular and terrifying. I'm positive they'd team up, take in all orphans and take pictures for posterity. :)
> 
> (Could probably be considered part of the Shinobi Den Mother 'verse, but doesn't have to be.)

“Well,” a vaguely amused voice drawls. “You're not who I was expecting to find.”

Maes sits up with a jerk, heart suddenly in his throat as a wistful daydream about fresh air shatters, and he’s _absolutely certain_ he didn’t hear anyone coming. Would have sworn to it, and he’s an Investigations officer, has spent the majority of his life poking his nose into place it isn’t supposed to be, is one of the best at getting places unseen and unheard, and he can count on one hand the number of times someone not named Roy Mustang has managed to sneak up on him since boot camp.

Those facts, however, don’t seem to affect the man currently crouched on a beam above his cell, watching him with curious eyes and a distinct lack of awareness to the twenty-foot drop below him.

Maes shoves his glasses up, drags his heartbeat back under control, and offers up his best friendly smile. “Sorry about that—this last round of guards seems to have a fondness for playing musical cells.”

The man hums, and he’s mostly hidden by the thick shadows but Maes can pick out a flash of metal near his mouth, more at his sides. Likely not guns, since no one here seems to use anything more advanced than swords, but probably knives at the very least. Maes approves, though he would approve more if they would pass him a few. He’s always appreciated a good knife.

“I don’t suppose you know where they moved the man who used to be in that cell?” the stranger asks, still light and friendly like they're sharing space at a bar. Maes approves of that, too—no need to be rude, even to your enemies, when a bit of good humor can get you so much more, and unnerve people on top of that.

Still, that friendliness might disappear quickly. Maes winces a little, carefully not glancing at the blood stain by the door, and says, “They took exception to his last escape attempt. I hope he wasn’t a friend.”

Instead of getting sad or angry, the man chuckles, then rises from his crouch. With the same blithe carelessness that Maes most usually sees in the Elric brothers, he plants a hand on the narrow beam, vaults over the side, and drops to the floor of the corridor between the cells with a muffled thump. Maes can't fight a grimace, because just _looking_ at that move has his knees aching, but the man doesn’t seem to have noticed that he has joints at all. He straightens, then steps into the pool of light from the flickering bulb, and Maes’s first thought is for the long needle in his mouth. A weapon, definitely, and despite the laid-back slouch to his shoulders, he still puts Maes in mind of some of the special operations soldiers he’s known. Dangerous, aware of it, and ready to move at a moment’s notice if it’s asked of him.

“Not exactly,” he says, and the slant of his mouth is amused, but his eyes are sharp. “Saves me a bit of effort, really. I get paid either way, so long as his former employer knows he’s dead.”

 _Mercenary_ , Maes thinks, casting another quick look over the man. That’s probably some kind of uniform—he’s been a soldier long enough to know mass-produced ‘fits as many as possible with as little effort as possible’ styles when he sees them, and that vest looks like light body armor, too—and he moves like he’s well-trained. And, if he’s sneaking around the prison, he’s probably not affiliated with the bastards who have been sitting on Maes for far too long now.

Maes doesn’t exactly have anything of value on him to trade for a favor at the moment, but he has to at least _try_.

Before he can say anything, though, the mercenary steps forward, lightly rapping his knuckles against the bars of the cell. “You’re not a shinobi,” he says thoughtfully, watching Maes. “Why are a bunch of samurai so interested in keeping you locked up?”

The words are unfamiliar, but the sentiment isn’t, Maes thinks a little wryly. Clearly there's some deep-seated rivalry there. It’s like that movie he took Gracia to see on their last date. Their last date before he _died_ , and god, that thought is more than enough to twist his heart into knots, even now. What she must have gone through—

“They took offense to me snooping,” Maes says with a friendly grin, shutting that thought away. There's nothing he can do, a whole universe away, and it’s been over a year now. Gracia is the strongest person he’s ever met. She’ll be okay. “Apparently their files aren’t open to the public. Who knew?”

The mercenary chuckles. “The Land of Iron has a problem with marking what’s off-limits,” he agrees cheerfully. “Been here long?”

Maes has no idea, and he hadn’t managed to figure out the date before he ended up here, so asking won't help. “It was spring when they grabbed me,” he says with a shrug. “Waxing gibbous moon, if that matters.”

Dark brows slide towards the mercenary’s bandana. “Well, since it’s winter now, I think we can safely say it’s been a while. Those must have been some important files you were trying to swipe.”

“I wasn’t trying to _swipe_ them!” Maes protests, wounded by the accusation. “I was just _looking_!”

The man blinks, then tips his head back and laughs. “I take it they didn’t believe you?”

Maes sniffs, nudging his glasses back up, and swings his feet over the edge of the rough cot to face the man more comfortably, since this conversations doesn’t look to be ending abruptly. It’s _nice_ —since he got tossed in here he hasn’t actually talked to another human being beyond some backchat at the guards and a few bits of information passed between prisoners. “I told them I had no idea where I was and just wanted to get the lay of the land. In retrospect, I probably should have lied and told them something they’d believe instead of the truth.”

With a tip of his head, the mercenary goes back to studying him, eyes faintly narrowed. “No idea?” he asks, clearly testing.

Maes grimaces, and he could absolutely lie, hedge, dissemble. It’s what he did when he first woke up in the middle of a field, with no memory of how he’d gotten here beyond a fractured flash of the bastard who shot him looming over him with a broad shape at his shoulder. Maybe the one Ed had described meeting in Lab 5—Maes can't be sure, but he suspects it was.

“I died somewhere else and woke up here,” he says, and god, Ed and Al and Roy are the ones who should be dealing with this mystical bullshit—sorry _, science_ —not _Maes_. “This whole place is _insane_ , and I've never seen any of it before in my life.”

That, at least, gets him a snort instead of outright disbelief. “Honestly? I've heard stranger,” the man says. He pauses for a long moment, then offers, “Genma Shiranui, of Konoha.”

“That’s probably supposed to mean something to me,” Maes acknowledges, “but sadly I've never heard of Konoha before.”

Genma rolls his eyes a little. “Yeah, well, samurai hate shinobi, so you wouldn’t have. Got a name?”

“Oh. Oh! Sorry, I'm Maes Hughes,” Maes answers, dragging his mind back from a frantic search for the name Konoha. He’s definitely never heard it before, though. He could probably give his military rank, but it’s pretty much useless here, and beyond that, it’s always good to keep some facts in reserve.

“Nice to meet you,” Genma says with a friendly smile, pulls the needle from his mouth, and crouches down to eye the lock on Maes’s cell. A moment of study and he whistles, low and impressed, and puts the needle back. “They definitely weren’t taking chances with you getting out, were they?”

Maes grins at him, unrepentant. “I may have picked the first ten. Or so.”

Genma laughs, expression delighted, and pulls a vial from the pouch strapped to his thigh. It’s wrapped with paper, but when he uncorks it and tips it over the lock, viscous off-white goo slides out. It hisses when it comes into contact with the latch, and Maes feels his eyebrows start to climb. Acid isn’t exactly a standard item for most mercenaries, as far as he’s aware.

“Clan secret,” Genma tells him, without glancing up as he carefully melts the door open. “Able to dissolve bone in seconds. My mom taught me how to make it.” His smile is still perfectly friendly, entirely cheerful, and Maes has to swallow at the thought. He remembers Genma's first words, about coming to kill the cell’s former occupant, and very carefully upgrades _mercenary_ to _assassin_.

“Handy,” he says lightly, keeping his voice even.

Genma either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “Mm. The guards’ shift change is in about ten minutes. Think you can walk well enough to get out of here?”

“ _Gleefully_ ,” Maes tells him, and even if he hadn’t remembered all the exercises to keep his muscles in shape that they taught at the military academy, he’d _crawl_ out if he had to.

Glancing up, Genma flashes him a crooked smile, full of charm and just a touch of flirtation. “Well then, Hughes, let’s move.” He swings the door open, stepping back, and Maes wastes no time hurrying out.

“I'm going to see _daylight_ again,” he says rapturously, shoving his glasses up his nose. “ _Thank you_.”

Wryness slants into Genma's smile, even as he palms a leaf-shaped blade and slips another up his sleeve. “Sunrise, probably, if I've got my timing right. We’re a couple hours from the Fire Country border if you can move fast, and then it’s another day and a half to Konoha at shinobi speeds.”

“You have a car? A train?” Maes asks hopefully, and when Genma gives him a curious but mostly blank look he groans. “Never mind. On foot, then?”

“Well, in the trees once we cross the border,” Genma says with a shrug, like that makes any sort of sense at all. At the foot of the stairs, he pauses, raising a hand for silence, and Maes goes still, listening carefully. He can't hear anything, but he remembers how Genma sneaked up on him so easily and doesn’t mention it. Clearly Genma knows what he’s doing.

Still utterly silent, Genma tips his head, then raises a hand with two fingers up. Two people approaching, and it takes several more seconds before Maes hears them. He glances over at Genma, but the man isn’t looking at him, just watching the stairs with the same intensity as a cat in front of a mouse hole. A booted foot comes into their line of vision, then another set behind it, and a man grunts unhappily and mutters, “Why does anyone even think an intruder would come down _here_ with the rats and the scum—”

In a blur, Genma launches himself forward, knife already flying. It takes the first man right in the throat where the plates of his armor leave a gap, and he crumples almost instantly—an artery hit, then. The second shouts, flings two knives of his own even as he reaches for his sword, but Genma's second knife is already in the air. It slams into the first projectile, knocks it into the second, and all three clatter to the stone as Genma flips in midair. He slams into the guard, knees locked around his head, and with a sharp twist the dull crack of a breaking neck echoes through the stairwell. They fall, and Genma lands in a crouch on top of the body, listening again.

Barely ten seconds to kill two men, Maes thinks, brows rising. Even a state alchemist and a soldier would have trouble with that.

(Not Roy, but then, getting the power to kill people was never Roy’s problem.)

“Impressive,” he says as Genma twists bonelessly to his feet, and he can see similarities to the way Ed fights, but they're vague echoes at best. Ed comes at things head-on and dares them to kill him. Genma's more the cat Maes just compared him to—focused, efficient, and brutal, but beautiful even so.

“I try,” Genma says, giving him an easy smile. He still has that needle in his mouth, not a hair out of place. You can't tell he just killed two men.

 _Enemy combatants,_ Maes tells himself firmly, dredging up his training. He’s never been a front lines kind of soldier, but he knows how to keep moving in the face of death.

Sometimes it feels like he doesn’t know anything else.

Setting his jaw, he follows Genma up the stairs at a run, then out into the snow. It’s cold enough to make him gasp, and the prison wasn’t exactly balmy but at least there wasn’t a wind that could cut to the bone.

“I know,” Genma murmurs, taking his arm. “Come on, once we’ve gained some distance I’ll dig out some blankets.” He tugs Maes back into movement, hurrying him towards a high wall, then hooks an arm around his waist and orders, “Hold on.”

 _To what?_ Maes opens his mouth to ask, but they’re already flying upward in a leap no human should be able to manage. Genma flips over as they clear the wall, and Maes feels his stomach lurch, but an instant later they’re touching down as lightly as if they were made of feathers.

Behind them, someone shouts.

“Ah, damn,” Genma mutters, then grabs Maes’s hand and drags him into a run towards the looming shadow of a forest.

 

“How are your toes?”

Ignoring the thread of amusement in Genma's voice, Maes wriggles the digits in question, wrapped in Genma's sleeping bag and practically in the fire at this point. “Still attached, so I'm counting that as a stroke of luck,” he says primly, and Genma chuckles.

“Good,” he says, leaning forward to check the pot of tea that’s brewing. Maes is more of a  coffee man, himself, but he’s willing to admit it smells _amazing_ , and more importantly it promises to be warm. The slightly mealy and off-tasting bar Genma gave him was filling, but pretty much frozen solid.

The massive trees bending over them cast shadows thicker than midnight, even though the sun only just went down, and Maes finds himself studying his rescuer’s face in the shifting firelight. Genma is several years younger than him, likely not more than twenty-two, lean and fit and sporting scars, with the ability to set a pace that would leave the hardiest soldier wheezing for mercy. He’d clearly slipped into the prison for a reason, one he was being paid for, and Maes can't help wondering how much of his own plan he derailed in staging a jailbreak.

Clearing his throat, he takes the metal cup Genma passes him, and says, carefully deliberate, “Thank you.”

Genma doesn’t play dumb or pretend to misunderstand. He just shrugs, smiling a little, and sinks back, crossing his legs under him and cradling his own mug in his hands. “You looked like you needed some help. I could offer it. That’s all it was.”

“Without me no one would have even realized you were there,” Maes counters. “I ruined whatever cover you had, and you're still taking me back to your hometown. I'm grateful.”

Brown eyes flicker up to him, then drop to regard the fire, and one corner of Genma's mouth pulls up. “There was a war about ten years ago. One of the heroes—one of _my_ heroes—told me that killing people was fine, if it was for the village, but that we should help whenever we could to balance it out. I'm not so great at that part, but…you I could save.”

Maes can't fight a bittersweet smile. Echoes of Roy, he thinks, taking a sip of tea and trying not to burn his tongue. Less regret for killing, but that same desperate drive to do good.

“Well, I certainly appreciate it,” he says cheerfully, and watches Genma's smile fill out again as he raises his head. “I’ll definitely repay you as soon as I get a job, too. Uh. Probably? I mean, _someone_ must need something filed.”

Genma laughs, setting his cup aside and stretching. “Don’t worry, I didn’t save you just to drop you in the gutter as soon as we hit Konoha,” he says with amusement. “I’ll shove Kotetsu and Izumo into Iruka and Naruto's room and you can crash there. We’ve got space. The brats won't mind sharing.”

Genma looks _much_ too young to have four children, Maes thinks, blinking at him. He clears his throat and asks, “Your kids?”

Genma rolls his eyes a little, but the expression is entirely fond. “Yeah, they're mine, but they're adopted. Monsters, all four of them.”

The ache of Elicia’s absence is like a hole torn right through Maes’s chest. He winces, tries too late to bury the expression, and knows Genma sees by the flicker of pained sympathy in his face.

“My daughter,” he says, managing something that might pass as a smile in the dark. “She and Gracia will get my benefits, so they won't need anything—”

“Except for you,” Genma says softly, and when Maes looks at him, abruptly exhausted and so, so sad, he reaches out, pressing his fingers to the back of Maes’s hand. “I don’t know how you got here, and I don’t know how to get you back,” he says quietly, “but if I did…”

“I know.” Maes catches his fingers, squeezing gently, and then lets go. He clears his throat, goes for a blatant change of subject, and asks, “How far to Konoha from here?”

Thankfully, Genma goes with the shift. He hums, considering, and offers, “A day at least. Maybe more, since I forgot how slow civilians are.” Maes makes an offended face at him and he grins, lazy and warm. “Well, probably not more than two days at the most. Longer than that and Kotetsu and Iruka are likely to come looking. They like to pretend they're sensible but they're really not.”

They sound like a good family, Maes thinks, and pulls his feet back from the fire a little, since he’s pretty sure he can smell roasting flesh at this point. He glances from the sleeping bag to Genma, who’s bundled up in his vest and long-sleeved shirt and sitting close to the fire, and then says firmly, “Well, come on, get in before I lose all the warmth.”

Genma blinks, glancing from him to the sleeping bag and back. “It’s a tight fit,” he says mildly. “I was just going to stay up and keep watch.”

He’s _definitely_ young if he can casually propose an all-nighter after their run today, Maes thinks despairingly. God, Maes feels _old_ now. “Are you saying you won't wake up the second one of those traps of yours goes off?” he asks dryly.

The smirk that curves Genma's mouth is three parts satisfaction to four parts wickedness. “Of course I will. Not that there will be anything left to deal with if they _do_ go off.”

“There,” Maes tells him firmly, and flaps the edge of the sleeping bag again. “Argument made. Come on.”

Genma must be colder than he looks, because he doesn’t try to argue any further. He waits for Maes to stretch out, then sheds his vest and sandals and slides in next to him, pulling the flap closed. There's a faint shiver running through him, but Maes politely doesn’t mention it, turning onto his side to offer Genma as much room as possible and breathing out. Genma mutters something that might be a good night and closes his eyes, and a few minutes later his breathing evens out, a soldier’s fast drop into sleep knowing that every second of rest counts.

Maes has never been much good at that particular trick, so he lies there in the dark, thinking about the sunrise he saw through the trees, the fresh air and how it feels on his face. Thinking about a bloodstained prison cell, and a friendly assassin with four children waiting for him at home.

He takes a breath, and Genma is a warm weight against his side. Another breath, and he thinks of home, of Central City, of the family he won't see again.

They’ll survive without him, and he’ll survive without them, but he hates that they _have to_.

Warm weight curls against his chest, ad before he can think better of it Maes wraps his arms around Genma, presses his face into soft brown hair. There are tears on his cheeks, and he promises himself this is the only time, that he’ll be stronger in the morning, but for now, just this once—

Genma presses his hand over Maes’s where it rests on his chest, laces their fingers and slides his hand over until it’s pressed over his heart. Maes takes a shuddering breath, but the steady rhythm is comforting, familiar.

He breathes out, and it’s easier.

There's no sound but the crackling of the fire and the wind in the trees, but Genma is warm in his arms, a silent comfort, and Maes breathes in, breathes out.

He thinks of the sunrise.


End file.
